Construction Begins on the Oyasato-yakata

In 1954, the year Tenri City itself was formally established by the merger of six villages, Tenrikyo Church Headquarters began construction on the Oyasato-yakata, a building complex conceived to fulfil foundress Nakayama Miki's teaching that the ground around the sacred Jiba, the Home the Parent, would become the model of a Joyous Life for all humanity. Architect Onzo Okumura planned the complex as an incomplete square measuring roughly 873 meters, eight cho, on each side, following a scale the foundress herself had described, with sixty eight interconnected wings intended eventually to ring the Jiba entirely. The Oyasato Construction Young Men's Association Hinokishin Corps organized that same year to carry out the building work as a form of voluntary religious service rather than paid labor. Completed sections have gone on to house Tenri University, Tenri Hospital, Tenri Seminary, Tenri High School, the Sankokan Museum and lodging for visiting followers, so that a project begun as postwar reconstruction became infrastructure for the faith's teaching, medical and educational work. The project continues today, still short of its full sixty eight wings.